If you had visited the Bedouin Squadron at about eleven o'clock in the morning you would have received quite a shock when entering the officers' mess. In the first place, you would have found the mess deserted except for several dogs of unknown species and innumerable cats,--some proudly nourishing recent offspring, others in various stages of anticipation of a similar pleasure. Secondly, you would have been surprised at the comfortable, if not artistic, interior of our exteriorly unattractive hut. In the centre of the "ward-room" or sitting-room was an open fireplace of ingenious design. On a stone and earth base, covered with sheet iron, rested a large cast-iron box with many peculiarly shaped apertures resembling as far as possible the incomprehensible design of a lady's lace mouchoir. The fire-box was supported by four cast-iron "whirly-gigs," the artistic effort of a mechanic detailed to construct legs for the support of the aforesaid fire-box. Above this box a large hollow pyramid, the apex of which connected with a pipe, which in turn after divers wanderings led through a hole in the roof, offered an exit for the smoke. Needless to say, this offer was frequently ignored. Around this fireplace was a foot-railing constructed from the main spar of a crashed Handley-Page. The rest of the furniture fortunately was not homemade. Large easy-chairs and lounges, the gift of a friendly merchant of Nancy, often made progress from one end of the room to the other,--a feat requiring considerable skill in navigation. A piano was wedged into one corner of the room; "Sin-fin," a mad Irishman, appeared with this piano one day together with an exhilarated French officer driving a lorry. No one ever found out how the piano had been secured, but since a sweet little "demoiselle" now rides "Sin-fin's" Irish hunters, we may believe, if we wish, that a rickety piano formed the basis of an international romance. [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO OFFICERS' MESS] The walls of the room were draped with rich damask; as the officers' steward who produced this incongruous luxury was an ex-convict, no inquiries were made concerning it. In the same hut with the ward-room and adjoining it was the mess or dining-room and beyond this was the "galley" or kitchen. While the Bedouins were inflicted with a cook who had been in pre-war days an expert electrician, the kitchen would not have been your most attractive route to the officers' sleeping-quarters. Presuming that you left the mess through its more congenial exit, the ward-room, the next hut you would have come to was the officers' quarters. There at eleven o'clock in the morning you would have heard a full symphony rendered by twenty lusty sleepers. "Is this war?" you might have asked yourself if you did not have in mind that you were visiting a night-bombing squadron. The officers in this hut had returned but five or six hours previously from an all-night raid over Germany.